In watercrafts, a substantial amount of the energy required for forward thrust (e.g. with rearwardly located blade impellers) thereof is wasted due to drag-induced frictional forces, and in particular from the underlying body of water on the watercraft hull. Alternate methods of imparting thrust to a watercraft in a way that would reduce drag, would be welcome.
Sailboats tend to be more efficient than powerboats, but they depend upon the whims of the wind, so they cannot be relied upon to go from A to B in a set time. Hydrofoils or hovercrafts are also quite efficient, but are very noisy and their distribution has always remain quite limited because of their inherent technical limitations. Use of electromagnets in transport has been demonstrated with so-called “maglev” trains tested in Japan and China, where the trains levitate at a very low altitude over the rail again to reduce frictional forces. However, these magnetic levitation trains remain for the time being mainly experimental except in China, due to several major as yet unsolved technical challenges.
A magnet is a body that attracts iron and certain other material, by virtue of a surrounding field of force produced by the motion of its atomic electrons and the alignment of its atoms. An electromagnet, in turn, is a magnet (consisting essentially of a soft-iron core) wound with a current-carrying coil of insulated wire, the current in which produces the magnetization of the core. Accordingly, the electromagnet generates an electromagnetic field of force associated with an accelerating electric charge, having both electric and magnetic components and containing a definite amount of electromagnetic energy.